


Latin and French

by gravitydorks (orphan_account)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Ballerina Petunia AU, I have no idea how this is going to end folks, Lots of sisterly love and support after some chapters, Other, Parallels between Lily and Harry, Petunia learns how to chill, They punch bullies in the face, also parallels between Lily and Hermione, because badass muggleborn witches
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-23
Updated: 2018-06-29
Packaged: 2019-05-27 10:21:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 3,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15022514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/gravitydorks
Summary: Petunia fights off her jealousy standing on pointe shoes.





	1. Chapter 1

 When Petunia Evans was small, well, smaller, she wanted to be either a fairy or a ballerina. The latter was in her short list of career choices in case magic wasn`t real.  
It turned out to be real alright but as much unattainable as it had been before. Unattainable to her, at least.  
 The day Lily left the stupid hidden magical platform on the obviously magical, thus stupid, train with her stupid wand and her stupid Snape, Petunia asked mom and dad if she could attain ballet classes. Mr. and Mrs. Evans exchanged glances.  
 "Does it have anything to do with Lily?" asked Mrs. Evans. "Tuney, darling, you don`t need to prove anything to her nor to us. I know it`s hard to deal with your sister being a witch. Maybe it even seems to you like we love her more now, but, sweetie, that`s not true. Both of you are our special little girls".  
 "Please, Tuney," Mr. Evans said holding her hand. "Don`t forget that your parents can`t do magic as well".   
 Petunia took a deep breath. They were both infuriating and sweet at the same time, just like Lily. Maybe it was inherent and she actually was like that as well.  
 "The world doesn`t rotate around Lily," she couldn`t help but feel bitterness on her tongue. "Please. I won`t ask anything more from you ever again".  
 She got it, in the end. Ten minutes prior her first lesson her father said, face full of concern:  
 "If it`s too hard you can give up on it any time".  
 Petunia pecked on his cheek and ran out of the car. Her parents were such hypocrites, in her opinion. They had sent Lilly to an actual school for witches only a day before. They let her be among a bunch of infants who didn`t know their own magic and value of human life. Lily had been unconcerned with the thought, that she would have gotten hurt on that damned swing, only rising higher and laughing at her sister`s fear. Petunia was sure that Snape boy didn`t regret hurting her with that damned branch. It could have ended really badly, she knew. She knew how dangerous magic could be.  
 No matter how hard it was, she wouldn`t give up on ballet, she realized. She was too stubborn and obsessive to do that.  
On her first lesson she cried. There were girls younger than her and they didn`t bat an eye. The teacher didn`t try to soothe her. She only looked at her sternly but not mockingly or disappointedly. It was like she understood Petunia`s pain but only told her, not actually saying a single word, that it would always be like that. Petunia could either deal with that or leave. She was thirteen, a bit too old to start dancing, anyway.  
 But Petunia was too stubborn and obsessive for her own good.


	2. Chapter 2

 The snow was falling slowly outside, the air smelled like gingerbread, Lilly was sitting beside her, and still instead of pure joy, which she would have felt in the past, Petunia felt hunger. She hadn`t let it show to any of her parents for almost four month. She had a specific diet and she was perfectly content with it, thank you very much. Even though she kind of started staring longingly at sweets, whenever she saw them.

 She had seen some of the girls smoking to escape the feeling, but cigarettes made her nauseous and dizzy so it wasn`t an option.

 She had actually improved in those four months. The lessons were much more bearable and she was corrected by her teacher far less than at the beginning. Her stamina, her willpower, her determination had been tested, and when she thought about it like that she felt perfect because she passed. A day turned into a week, a week into a month, and now there were almost four.

 Sometimes she felt perfect, and sometimes she felt miserable, she felt deprived, she felt hungry, hideous, unworthy, disgusting, the list had no end. So when she saw her gorgeous little sister with her bright smile, healthy complexion and magic in her very essence at the station all the negative emotions she had carefully hidden in the box at the back of her mind broke free. She physically felt everything she had put herself through in those four month at once. Her muscles ached and her stomach rumbled loudly. When everyone turned at the noise Petunia`s neck and ears turned pink, while her face became even paler than usual.

 “That`s so unfair,” she thought her eyes stinging. “When Lilly blushes it`s adorable, her cheeks are like two roses, while I look like a reversed lollipop”.

 Lilly gave her Sugared Butterfly Wings for Christmas and it took Petunia all her willpower not to throw the tin at the redhead. She managed to compose herself, thank the sibling and give her own present. It was a sweater so red a rare tomato could compare with its shade. Petunia knitted it herself. She enjoyed knitting. Knitting put her mind at ease when anxiety came. Maybe that`s why she made the sweater so unmatchable with Lilly`s hair.

 It seemed Lily clearly didn`t care. The instance she saw her crimson gift Lilly shrieked and put it on immediately her smile even broader.

 “It`s the colour of my house in Hogwarts! Thank you, Tuney. Could you add some golden or yellow shades, if you decide to knit me something again?”

 “Oh, yeah,” Petunia said more to herself. “You did write about the colours”. 

 Later she examined the tin and was even more surprised to find out the sweets would only expire in 792 years. She could save them for her retirement. That would be 27 years later at best.


	3. Chapter 3

 In the summer Lily came back at home again but so did Snape. Petunia didn`t particularly care about the boy, aside that he was a friend of Lily`s, and that he was potentially dangerous for society. He was a complete opposite of her sister. Lily was sweet, gentle and naïve, while he was an anthropomorphic spike on the back of a porcupine. Still there was some kind of chemistry between them. Petunia prayed Lily wouldn`t end up as his wife. A person like him wouldn`t be able to take care of her. He was elbows deep in misery.

 They played together a lot. Petunia had no right to intervene, not anymore. Instead she practiced her twirls, stretched, tried reading short stories in French, a subject she became so interested in after so many times she hadn`t been able to remember what a certain command from her teacher meant. It was much easier just to memorize ballet terms better but the idea of learning the language turned out to be too tempting to refuse.

 When she`d finished reading ‘Riquet à la Houppe’ in the company of her dictionary she pondered about Lily and Snape again. A beautiful elder sister from the story, who lacked intelligence, became wise after her groom had made her such gift. Her ugly prince became beautiful after she had transformed him. But she was able to do that because he had good inner qualities.

 So she was right then.  

 Petunia sighed. In the story the beautiful sister got married and benefitted more than she could have ever imagined. Her younger, smart but ugly, sister was left alone.

 Did Petunia want to get married at all? Maybe, if her relationship with her husband were like mom and dad`s.


	4. Chapter 4

 When you are surrounded by girls of different age sooner or later you are to start thinking about your appearance.

 In Petunia`s case it just became more intense.

 There was Sarah, nice and sweet Sarah, with her delicate figuration, fair complexion, heart-shaped face, big blue eyes with long dark lashes, and golden waves of hair.

 There was Charlotte, not particularly beautiful, but elegant and stylish. Her dark almond-shaped eyes and tanned skin also added some mysteriousness to her look.

 There was Julie, tall and intimidating, as only a goddess of war would be like, her hair even deeper shade of red than Lily`s.

 There were others, beautiful in their own way, and there was her, a bland girl with long neck and big teeth. She rarely smiled because her classmates and some other kids in school made fun of her horse-like smile. She took good care of her hair, but even with every single lock on its place she still remained unattractive. No matter how many times she ironed her skirt she still looked boring. Acne on her forehead was the last straw. It was as if she was drowning.

 On her way back home from ballet school she saw Charlotte. She was smoking again. Alone. Petunia stopped walking. She didn`t know why it felt so weird to look at, but it did.

 Charlotte glanced at her, indifference in those dark eyes. Petunia obliged to a sudden urge to come closer. The air around her was suffocating. Somehow Petunia did not cough.

 “Hey. You`re not here for a cigarette, are you?” the elder girl asked.

 “Hi, Charlotte” came her choked greeting, “No, I`m not”.

 “Passive smoking is almost as effective”, she said taking a draw of cigarette, “If you`re here for an advice I`m not really good at giving them”.

 “How do you know you`re making the right choice?” Petunia asked, “Choice to become a ballerina, I mean”.

 There was a short silence. Charlotte took a draw of cigarette again.

 “I don`t. I think it`s more of a ‘survival of the fittest’. You don`t really get to choose. If you weren`t good enough the question wouldn`t rise at all”.

 She put out the cigarette and threw it in the bin. Then she took a good look at Petunia and added:

 “You have other things to think about at your age, you know. Your hair colour doesn`t suit you at all, kid, I`m not even mentioning its texture. You should also do something with your forehead”.

 “You`re only a year older than me”.

 “I did warn you I give shit advices” Charlotte shrugged.


	5. Chapter 5

 The next time Lily came home at Christmas, she was surprised to see her sister a freshly dyed brunette. Her eyebrows were darkened so people could actually see she had them, and her hair was curled making it look thicker. It was a rather exciting change, in Lily`s opinion, but the thought, that it happened without her, made her a little upset.

 The distance between them had never been funny. Lily had been trying to connect with Petunia again and had failed miserably. When Lily made a step in her direction Petunia dashed away. She wrote her letters but Petunia wrote back in an unusually to their original relationship formal way. They stopped sharing stories and secrets late at night. Lily tried to revive their old little tradition but it seemed like Petunia didn`t care at all. It hurt. It hurt to think she didn`t care about her. It hurt to think she didn`t love her anymore. It hurt to think their friendship, their sisterhood couldn`t be retained.

 Looking at yellow knee-high stockings with an adorable lion head on each Lily refused to believe everything was lost to them. Petunia had knitted her a present once again, and she had added yellow that time.

 Lily in return gave her a special ointment with a low percentage of dittany. Professor Slughorn had assured her it was still effective against minor losses of skin, callouses, nail deformation, and even prevented fungus as a nice addition. He had shown surprise at how specific she was about feet injuries but Lily was just genuinely concerned about her sister. She had heard stories of how ballerinas` feet became unrecognizable because of pointe shoes.

 Petunia was as surprised to Lily`s detailed description of the ointment. When Lily explained her point Petunia laughed warmly, took off her socks and moved her fingers showing that they were perfectly unharmed.

 “We actually take good care of ourselves, Lilly. You shouldn`t be concerned. Thank you for the present though. It `s going to be really handy. That was very thoughtful of you”.

 Then Lily talked. She talked about Potions, and Petunia marveled how many there were. She talked about Slughorn, and Petunia noted how his links could help Lily make a career in magic community. She talked about Snape, how she didn`t really like his new friends, especially Malfoy, and Petunia rose her brow saying ‘With a surname like that, of course, you don`t’. She talked about Potter`s gang, and Petunia frowned asking if they had tried to pick on her.

 Petunia started talking too. She talked about her lessons, about the story she had read recently in French, about the girls she went to ballet school with, and how she wished she could do 32 turns just like Julie.

 It was a merry Christmas indeed.


	6. Chapter 6

 Her hair dye was a onetime thing she had done looking for some changes. To be honest, out of curiosity too. Dark suited her. She would most certainly make it her permanent colour in the future, closer to a chestnut shade maybe. Teachers and other adults looked at her sideways though. Petunia didn`t want to deal with unwanted attention, so she decided such thing could wait until her graduation. Still, out of pure spite of being held back by public opinion, Petunia cut off the dark locks leaving a pixie of her natural colour. She felt angry that filling the criteria of ‘normal’ mattered to her to the extent of feeling fear and anxiety. Of course a teen in a skirt with a boyish haircut received even more funny looks. Somehow she felt anxious and satisfied at the same time.

 Mrs. Evans had been patient and supportive the whole process of her elder daughter`s teenage angst. She was the one, who offered Petunia to become a brunette, after Petunia talked to her about a colour change. She was the one who asked the hairdresser to cut Petunia`s hair as short as her daughter wanted. She was the one who rolled eyes at not so quiet whispers of those-supposed-to-be-adults.

 Mr. Evans, a diplomat in soul, had only kissed his elder on the cheek complementing her look both times.

 It was actually very comfortable, when she put on wigs for performances. By the way, she`d started performing. Obviously her training had become more brutal. At least she could let out her fury and frustration that way.

 Her relationship with Lily had improved to her own bewilderment. The pack of letters Lily brought home in summer was filled with warmth and reliance.

 Lily kept the letters close to herself in the train. She was afraid her sister would come back to hostility and indifference towards her.

 The way Petunia smiled at her on the station brought her indescribable relief.  

 ‘Why is your brother wearing a skirt, Evans?’ she heard Potter remark.

 The poor guy left the station with a black-eye.


	7. Chapter 7

 In preparation of Lily`s third year the family went shopping. Unlike last summer all of them went to Diagon Alley.

 Lily took so many subjects the quantity of books was accordingly large. She`s always been hungry for knowledge. She learned for the sake of learning, while her sister was more practical in that matter. To her, knowledge had to be used in real life.

 “Muggle Studies? Are you serious, Lily?” she marveled examining the letter from Hogwarts. “Why would you want to study that?”

 “Isn`t it interesting? To learn the wizarding world`s perception of us?”

 “I am curious. Curious about what a complete nonsense it probably is. When people learn about things right under their noses from textbooks it speaks a lot, Lils”.

 She skipped over the list of subjects once again and frowned.

 “Why is Defense Against the Dark Arts a core class?” she asked.

 Lily averted her gaze.

 “It`s nothing to worry about, Tuney. It`s just a self-defense class, what`s wrong with that? DADA`s been taught to us since the very beginning anyway”.

 Petunia glanced at their parents, they were paying for the books in the meantime.

 “How often do wizards attack each other?” she asked lowering her voice.

 “Tuney”.

 “How often, Lily?” Petunia demanded. “You wrote me about constant pranks and bullying. Children grow up and become a crowd in the street. So how often do the adults fight?”

 “I don`t know,” she answered. “I really don`t. I haven`t particularly interacted with grown up wizards outside Hogwarts”.

 “It`s written here that from this year you`re allowed to visit a magical village”.

 “Are you going to persuade mom and dad to not sign my permission?” Lily asked in a quiet voice.

 “Of course not, but promise me you`ll be extra careful,” Petunia sighed. “I wonder how many dangerous objects and creatures are in your world”.

 “Relax, Tuney. It`s a school! The headmaster would prevent anything potentially dangerous on the territory”.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Harry James Potter, the boy-whose-life-was-threatened-by-not-only-magical-creatures-and-objects-but-homicidal-teachers-with-their-megalomaniacal-master-and-the-death-itself:  
> "Sure, mom".


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I warn you there are tears.

 That year Christmas was… weird.

 Petunia was on stage amongst other young ballerinas in snowflake crowns, while Mr. and Mrs. Evans met their youngest daughter on the platform to find her pale, sulking and puffy-eyed. She brushed off their attempts to ask her, what happened, and she actually lied right in their faces that she`d just fallen asleep on the train.

 When she and Petunia were alone washing dishes the elder sister asked:

 “Lily, what`s wrong?”

 For some time Lily remained silent. Then she spoke:

 “Do you remember Slug Club?”

 “Your Potions teacher`s collection of talents?” Lily nodded in confirmation.

 “I was invited to one of his parties,” she said.

 Petunia pursed her lips.

 “I would congratulate you but… you don`t look thrilled about that. Did something happen at the party?”

 Lily took a deep breath.

 “There were students from all houses, smart, talented, but mostly well connected. There were many Slytherins older than me. I`ve never been in contact with them, so the way all of them were staring right at me, as if someone had spilled wine on a snow-white carpet, and I was the stain… There were so many of them, they were a majority of the club, and I… It`s hard to explain. The headmaster and the others constantly tell us, that it doesn`t matter who our parents are, wizards or not. But Tuney, do you know what they call people like me? Whose parents aren`t wizards?”

 Petunia saw tears on her cheeks.

 “They call us mudbloods. I`ve read about that, and I really wanted to believe it was left in the past. I thought, these are different times, those of magical families are just getting used to us, they know nothing about us, it`s just a matter of time when this stupid tension at school will pass away. But now I think I was wrong. The atmosphere can become so tense all of a sudden, and I`m just sick of it. Wh-when I was at the party I overheard someone calling me that, and I`ve never been so close to those students to hear what they actually say, not what my peers put in their mouths, and I`ve been trying to stay away from fights. Well, except, when Sev was bullied, but those were the times when Potter and his company acted like jerks,” she sniffed. “When I told girls in my dorm they just said it was a common thing for them to say. They were surprised no one has ever called me that straight in the face”.

 Petunia hugged her. They stayed like that until Lily couldn`t cry anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please, comment, and tell me what you think.


End file.
